Concentrating light in Cu(In,Ga)Se2 solar cells

Light concentration has proven beneficial for solar cells, most notably for highly efficient but expensive absorber materials using high concentrations and large scale optics. Here we investigate light concentration for cost efficient thin-film solar cells which show nano-or microtextured absorbers. Our absorber material of choice is Cu(In, Ga)Se-2 (CIGSe) which has a proven stabilized record efficiency of 22.6% and which - despite being a polycrystalline thin-film material is very tolerant to environmental influences. Taking a nanoscale approach, we concentrate light in the CIGSe absorber layer by integrating photonic nanostructures made from dielectric materials. The dielectric nanostructures give rise to resonant modes and field localization in their vicinity. Thus when inserted inside or adjacent to the absorber layer, absorption and efficiency enhancement are observed. In contrast to this internal absorption enhancement, external enhancement is exploited in the microscale approach: mm-sized lenses can be used to concentrate light onto CIGSe solar cells with lateral dimensions reduced down to the micrometer range. These micro solar cells come with the benefit of improved heat dissipation compared to the large scale concentrators and promise compact high efficiency devices. Both approaches of light concentration allow for reduction in material consumption by restricting the absorber dimension either vertically (ultra-thin absorbers for dielectric nanostructures) or horizontally (micro absorbers for concentrating lenses) and have significant potential for efficiency enhancement.